International Forum of Psychoanalysis

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Culture and psychic suffering

Grigoris Maniadakis

To cite this article: Grigoris Maniadakis (2016) Culture and psychic suffering, International
Forum of Psychoanalysis, 25:1, 1-2, DOI: 10.1080/0803706X.2015.1129711

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2015.1129711

Published online: 20 Jan 2016.

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 International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2016
Vol. 25, No. 1, 1–2, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2015.1129711
EDITORIAL
Culture and psychic suffering
In his seminal work Civilization and its discontents,
Freud links the evolution of culture with man’s discom-
fort in it, mainly because of the loss of happiness due to
“the ethical demands of the cultural super-ego”
(Freud, 1930, p. 133). He holds that if the aim of life,
as revealed by human behavior, is the satisfaction of
all desires, the first requisite of culture is the assurance
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of a law that would put limits to personal gratification as
a demand of society. “Man’s natural aggressive
instinct, the hostility of each against all and of all
against each” (ibidem, p. 122), which menaces society
with disintegration, is dealt with by its internalization
in a part of the self called the superego (Jones 1957).
Psyching suffering from relinquishing gratification
and from the harshness of the superego, the “pathology
of cultural communities”, according to Freud (ibidem,
p.143), is the price to be paid for civilization. According
to Bion, group culture (as can be, for instance, faith to a
group leader or egalitarianism) arises from the conflict
between individual needs and a group mentality that
expresses a unanimous will, which is in opposition
with conscious individual aims (Bion 1961, Bléandonu
1990).
In this way the cultural bond is associated with the
uncomfortable acknowledgement of incompleteness
and of imperfect protection from lack. But what
happens if culture itself endorses the aim of omnipo-
tently gratifying every need? In this volume of Interna-
tional Forum of Psychoanalysis, Raaja Stitou ponders
the above question in her article “Psychoanalysis
and cultural change: Lacan’s contribution and a
new perspective”. She holds that modern civilization
tries to cover up lack at its root through sophisticated
objects which technology offers, while contemporary
normative discourses are dominated by the denial of
the incompleteness inherent in the human condition.
All these can lead to a new kind of psychic suffering,
related to the destructiveness this very denial entails,
and discernable in joint expressions of subjective suf-
fering and social problems, such as various kinds of
violent actions and addictive behavior.
A culture of omnipotent denial of lack can imply a
denial of bodily needs through the provision of an
© 2016 The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies
idealized body image. In their article “The implica-
tion of the sadistic superego in anorexia”, Ana
Maria Rudge and Betty Fuks speak of the interplay
of cultural and intrapsychic factors in the “culture”
of anorexia. Concerning the role of the ferocious
superego in this case, they see it as an often culturally
mediated, foreign-body like incorporated voice that
dictates the object’s wish to the subject.
Relinquishing unlimited gratification as a prerequi-
site of the social bond that forms the basis of civiliza-
tion and as a source of pain, reminds of the necessity
of giving up possession of the object – or of the reality
of losing it, and of the depressive pain this causes.
Giancarlo Ventimiglia’s article “On the development
of depressive states from a psychodynamic point of
view” focuses on the narcissistic aspect of object
loss that underlies depression, while also analyzing
its temporal dimension.
Object loss and trauma have often been associated
with the cultural activity that is called art, which
creates a special link of mutual containing between
the artist and its public, through a dialogue of aes-
thetic forms and responses to them. In her article
“Claude Debussy’s Opera Pelleas et Melisande :
Secrecy, mystery and ambiguity in Debussy’s life
and art”, Gertrude Schwartzman deals with the way
Claude Debussy achieved to contain the longings
rooted in his unhappy childhood experience in a
cherished work of art, speaking of love and loss.
Love and loss constitute, to a large extent, the
subject matter of Henry Zvi Lothane’s article “Sabina
Spielrein’s Siegfried and other myths: facts vs. fic-
tions”. The author attempts at fathoming the use of
the mythical/cultural/artistic figure of Siegfried by
Sabina Spielrein and its transformation to a personal
symbol in her effort to work through her relationship
with Jung. He also juxtaposes the creative use of
mythology by Spielrein with the transformation of Ger-
manic mythology to a racist, destructive ideology by
the Nazis, a culture which eventually served as legaliza-
tion for the genocidal “Final Solution”. This juxtaposi-
tion may remind us of Freud’s final remarks in
“Civilization and its Discontents”. Freud writes:
 2 Editorial
“The fateful question for the human species
seems to me to be whether and to what extent
their cultural development will succeed in master-
ing the disturbance of their communal life by the
human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.
[] And now it is to be expected that [] eternal
Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the
struggle with his equally immortal adversary.
But who can foresee with what success and with
what result?” (p. 144).
Concerning Jung, Lothane informs us that “he first
anonymously mentioned Spielrein in his second
letter to Freud in 1906 requesting Freud’s opinion,
in today’s terms, for supervision of his treatment”.
Today, one can say that, for more than a century
from Jung’s request to Freud, supervision has been
and is regarded as a major element of psychoanalytic
culture – especially of analytic training. In “Psycho-
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analytic supervision in the new millennium: on
pressing needs and impressing possibilities”, the last
article of this issue, C. Edward Watkins Jr considers
supervision as “the primary means by which psycho-
analytic ideology becomes translated into practical
product”. The author puts stress on a set of needs
concerning the systematization of training in supervi-
sion and on its adjustment to issues of today’s
culture, such as technology and matters of difference
and diversity.
Grigoris Maniadakis
IFP Coeditor-in-chief
References
Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups. London: Tavistock.
Bléandonu, G. (1990). Wilfred R. Bion, 1897–1979. La vie et
l’œuvre. Paris: Dunod.
Freud, S. (1930 [1929]). Civilization and its discontents. SE 21, 59–
146.
Jones, E. (1957). Sigmund Freud Life and Work, Volume Three: The
Last Phase 1919–1939. London. Hogarth.